Pilot Reports

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season/Series Premiere Review: “Will & Grace”

Posted September 29, 2017 by Mitch Salem

  WILL & GRACE:  Thursday 9PM on NBC Nothing and everything has changed since WILL & GRACE began its run on NBC in 1998, and departed in 2006.  Every effort has been made to duplicate the original series:  not only are Eric McCormack, Debra Messing, Sean Hayes and Megan Mullally back, along with series creators […]

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Reviews

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “Fargo”

Posted December 15, 2015 by Mitch Salem

  Noah Hawley handily retained his status as the Third Coen Brother with a second masterful season of FARGO.  This go-round may have been even more ambitious than the first:  not only did Hawley once again capture the spirit of the original film, but this time he added 1979-era period detail and an allegory of […]

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Reviews

THE SKED SEASON FINALE REVIEW: “Necessary Roughness”

Posted August 22, 2013 by Mitch Salem

  The renovations on Season 3 of NECESSARY ROUGHNESS worked out quite well.  The series jettisoned its original setting and much of its supporting cast, moving Dr. Dani Santino (Callie Thorne) from her job as in-house therapist to the NY Hawks football team to the high-powered V3 talent agency run by new regular (for this […]

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Reviews

THE SKED Season Finale Review: “Shameless”

Posted April 7, 2014 by Mitch Salem

  It made plenty of strategic sense for Showtime to reclassify SHAMELESS in its 4th season as a Comedy for Emmy Award purposes, since television is now swamped with contending dramas, but if the plan works, the result will be pretty ironic, since this was the season where the actions of the mostly happy-go-lucky Gallagher […]

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Reviews

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “Scandal”

Posted May 13, 2016 by Mitch Salem

  Even by the standards of current network TV, the ratings drop for SCANDAL has been steep and swift.  It’s down 50% from where it was 2 seasons ago, and down 30% this season.  It’s still one of ABC’s higher-rated hours, because it had been so huge at its peak, so its renewal was never […]

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Film Festival

Toronto Film Festival Reviews: “Hit Man,” “Daddio” & “Next Goal Wins”

Posted September 17, 2023 by Mitch Salem

  HIT MAN (no distrib):  A clever, funny, sexy entertainment from Richard Linklater and emerging star Glen Powell, who co-wrote the script with the director (both also produced), inspired by an already-wild true story.  Powell plays Gary Johnson, a philosophy teacher moonlighting as a consultant for a local Texas police department.  He’s supposed to be […]

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Film Festival

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival Reviews: “On Chesil Beach” & “Loveless”

Posted September 7, 2017 by Mitch Salem

  ON CHESIL BEACH (no distrib):  Ian McEwan’s longish novella/shortish novel has been adapted by McEwan himself into a fluid and extremely English film, the first feature directed by stage director Dominic Cooke.  The main action takes place during the honeymoon night of Florence (Saorirse Ronan) and Edward (Billy Howle) in 1962, with copious flashbacks […]

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2014-15 TV Season

THE SKED Fall Pilot Report: CW’s “The Flash”

Posted August 2, 2014 by Mitch Salem

  THE FLASH:  Tuesday 8PM on CW starting October 7 – If Nothing Else Is On… PLAYERS:  Series Creators/Executive Producers Greg Berlanti, Andrew Kreisberg and Geoff Johns, the first 2 of whom are also creators of Arrow, from which this Flash is a spin-off (he was introduced in an Arrow arc, and Stephen Amell makes […]

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